Here’s a few pages from a book from 1931*, when roundels were RED white and blue, thanks to the hand tinting colour process used. We take full colour printing for granted these days, but it wasn’t that long ago it was a big deal to have any colour at all – this book has only…
Mercury – Bell
Today’s Poster art. The handsome Mercury V8 Town-Sedan of ’42 seen in 1941, providing a moment of envy for the Bell P-39 Airacobra pilots, just before the USA’s entry into World War Two. The P-39 was a popular aircraft type for propaganda, though less capable in reality when tested in combat. Anoner ‘car & aeroplane’…
Outstanding Field Fort
Something a bit different today – a 350 metre wide Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress silhouette into a British field. Unfortunately the image is currently making the online rounds, but with the credit and with details removed and attributed to ‘two’ unnamed ‘farmers’. The correct details date to 2015, and are the work of two artists…
Sleek Caudron & Renault
When forced to support an aircraft maker, your car manufacturer has every justification in advertising their car in association – including using the pilot of both, here Raymond Delmotte. The Caudron C.461 is seen here with the Renault cabriolet, and both shows the fashions of extreme streamlining are as much fashion as they are pure…
‘Mozert’ to ‘Tokio’
Today’s image is a complete contrast to the racist violence of the secondary posters from yesterday, though the intent, from wartime America, is exactly the same. A classic calendar (see below) cheesecake artwork, this is unusual in being painted by ‘Zoë Mozert’, born as Alice Adelaide Moser, as shown here. Not a lot more to…
Doolittle Departed
Today’s Poster is in acknowledgement of the death of the the last of the airmen who flew with (then) Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle on the ‘Doolittle Raid’ on Tokyo, Japan, in 1942. The poster, a very simple design featuring a photo of James Doolittle and a simple exhortative text is most interesting in what it…
Messerschmitt Hands
Today a photograph, very much in the tradition of atmospheric art photos of the thirties. This is of the leading edge slat on a Messerschmitt Bf 109, or ‘‘Zwei Hände eines Arbeiters beim Arbeiten am Flügel eines Flugzeugs Messerschmitt Me 109.’ From 1940, the photographer is only listed as ‘Höss’, but the Bundesarchive search under…
Futurism Unfulfilled
Which airport would be worth highlighting in terms of design and art? This artwork today is a painting of a Continental Airlines Douglas DC-9 in front of the iconic ‘Theme Building’ at Los Angeles International (LAX) airport in California. The sixties aesthetic of the building is today countered by the true awfulness of LAX airport,…
The Pitcairn Possibility
Whenever I need to shoot, efficiently from the office to the cocktail party, to the golf course, then it’s my Pitcairn Autogiro that I reach for automatically. Because they’re ‘secure and practical for recreation and utility’, of course. But… If we go beyond the marketing spin from 1932, in fact they were reaching toward such…
Spotty Roundels
Today’s Poster. I really like this one, partly because it features roundels as an active part of the design – roundels come up again and again in military aviation art. The text (and jokes) are a bit laboured, but the illustration works well even without the text. Apparently the design’s by Victor Hicks (1893-1946) and…
A Year of Aviation Illustration & Art 